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As a producer are you usually hands-on when it comes to marketing your films?
“Yes, I am. I am. I mean in this case I have been as well, it’s just a slightly different methodology. Like 300, there have been teasers out for a year and I strongly believe, it’s a completely different kind of marketing, but I believe that with seven movies opening every weekend these days, you really have to get the word out in a major way and as early as possible.”
Do you feel the Internet plays a large role in how films are marketed now?
“Oh yeah, we have a tremendous Internet interactive campaign on Blades of Glory. The campaign has been much more extensive. It’s from Amy Powell at Paramount who did the interactive campaign for Nacho Libre, which was amazing, is also doing ours because we’re really impressed with the job she did for Jack Black and Nacho Libre.”
How do you know which film is right for you to produce?
“It’s like anything else. I mean, how does a pharmaceutical company know when their research R & D works out and they have a great new product? I’m really a story person. I started out as a screenwriter so I always go from a great story. And then the second component is the script matching the concept and the characters really coming to life - and that doesn’t always happen. But when it does happen, those are the movies that I am drawn to producing.”
Has any film you’ve produced taken off and become bigger than what you even anticipated?
“I think Anger Management, definitely. Anger Management started as an idea really with David Dorfman, the writer. When we first developed it, it was really about two unlikely people being forced to live together to be roommates, and everything else grew out of that. The surprise really, if you were to say what was a surprise, the idea of Anger Management is not exactly something every other person experiences. It’s something maybe a tenth of a percent of the population has actually experienced or knows someone who has. We just thought the characters were so great and if we could find a way to grow them together and force them to stay together, the characters were so great that it would pay off. But I think everyone was blown away by how well it succeeded.”
You said you were a screenwriter. Do you still write?
“I do still write, but I don’t have much time to write these days. That’s the truth, I don’t have much time lately. I haven’t left it very far behind because I work on stories every single day. I work with writers every single day and directors, so I haven’t left it behind at all.”
